The Romantic Movement by Alain De Botton Sex, Shopping, and the Novel

The author of On Love returns with the story of the ups and downs of an affair between Alice and Eric, complete with drawings and diagrams and a chorus of thinkers about love--from Descartes to Aretha Franklin.

Born in Zurich, Switzerland on December 20, 1969, Alain de Botton was educated at Cambridge University, England, and now divides his time between London and Washington, D.C. With the publication of his first novel, Essays in Love, de Botton quickly became one of the most talked about British novelists of the 1990s. Although the basic plot of Essays in Love (published in the U.S. as On Love) is a rather typical love story, de Botton presents it in a unique and humorous way. De Botton's other novels include The Romantic Movement: Sex, Shopping and the Novel, which is written in a similar style to Essays on Love, and Kiss and Tell, which follows a would-be biographer as he attempts to write the life story of the first person he encounters. Alain de Botton is also the author of How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel.

Unrated Critic Reviews for The Romantic Movement

Kirkus Reviews

A sometimes diverting, sometimes loquacious and cutesy second novel from de Botton (On Love (1993), who once again combines a twentysomething off-again-on-again relationship with various sorts of mock-serious disquisitions on love and other topics.

Publishers Weekly

Affable but uneven, this second novel (after On Love) by the young, London-based de Botton, is predicated on the same gimmick as his first: the evolution of a relationship between two London yuppies is intercut with digressive, theoretical musings on the nature of art and love.

The Independent

De Botton perfectly captures the limits of Alice and Eric's very middle-class relationship: 'When they went out for dinner, the conversation rarely strayed from topics covered in quality daily newspapers.'
For a while they're sustained by Alice's strenuous idealisation of Eric.

The Independent

A few examples will serve to give an idea of what The Romantic Movement holds in store: 'It isn't easy to realize someone can be nice to their secretary but beastly with their spouse.' 'Travel may more interestingly be read as a psychological rather than a geographic effort.' 'What is peculiar to...